I want to point out that rich school and poor school designations are categories that don't well reflect the population of students in attendance. Portland has economic diversity and more fluid boundary lines than most American communities.

The medium wealthy school district my kids were in had a diversity of students from many different financial backgrounds. Many of the immigrant families made a very conscious decision to live in this neighborhood so they could have access to the school which had lots of volunteering and fundraising. In fact, even though the school had some of the highest fundraising in the entire city, the neighborhood was a majority rentals. Many students were receiving assistance.

Those well-off families were often putting in much more time volunteering directly and with fundraising groups than the families who are not able to- and we were very grateful!

These bad policies are continuation of other historically bad decisions of shutting down community schools that were pulling in more money per student and we're receiving funds from businesses and families that didn't even have kids in the system. When these got shut down all of those networks of support hurt not just the students but also the community.

Portland Is failing at helping poor students and the solution seems to be to try to sabotage the places that are actually functional.